


This world may frown upon the things I have you do

by sugarboat



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Mild Dissociation, Mind Control, Oral Sex, Pryce and Cutter play mean, Spoilers up to Idle Hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 04:25:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13709781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: Kepler's performance review involves a hands-on demonstration of his leadership abilities.





	This world may frown upon the things I have you do

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during Idle Hands. 
> 
> [ This ] indicates flashback/thoughts. Hope it's not confusing.

“Well! Now that _that_ little bit of ugliness is out of the way…” Cutter trails off. His lips are like plump, wet worms, and they hook sharply upwards at one corner. Kepler feels his spine straighten in response. “Oh, Daniel?”

The clatter click fire of keys is abruptly silent. 

“Yes, sir?” Jacobi says, the words familiar, the cadence alien. A glassy stare, a smile that’s all teeth and no acerbic bite. 

“This next part is going to be,” Cutter sucks in a sharp hissing breath through slick teeth, “off the record.”

“Yes, sir!” Jacobi folds his hands in his lap. Eager and compliant. Or… no, that’s not quite right. Kepler can’t find the right word. 

“Warren,” Cutter sing-songs, and Kepler’s gaze jerks away from his subordinate.

“Yes, sir?” Kepler says. 

Dr. Pryce has moved to lean against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. Fingers digging into the cloth of her shirt. She looks nearly skeletal in the harsh overhead light, like the skin and meat of her has been lashed away. Or perhaps more accurately, like her excess pieces have been scavenged and repurposed. Reconstituted. He can almost hear the mechanical whirring of her eyes, imagining them focusing and zooming in on his face, searching him for tells. A sound that probably mimics the hiss and release of pressure when he twitches his brand-new fingers.

She’s smiling, too. 

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe I mentioned something about you _proving_ you belonged here… Didn’t I?” 

“Yes,” Kepler confirms, features set in stone. His tone betrays his hesitance. “Yes, you did, sir. And that is what I intend to do.”

“And I did say, _now_ , didn’t I?”

“…Yes? Sir?” 

“Good, good! That’s exactly what I thought.” Cutter’s lips split open like a fissure rupturing across a planet’s surface, spilling its molten insides. The glassy, gauzy reflection of sterile light across straight, even teeth. “Warren, I – Miranda and I, _both_ \- see your potential.” He takes a step forward. Then another. Kepler sets the file clenched tight in his hand, damp with sweat, down on the table next to his thigh. “But that’s not to say we’re _completely_ without our concerns.”

There’s no such thing as even ground around Mr. Cutter. It nevertheless bucks beneath them all, and Kepler feels ice water pulsing through his veins.

Metaphorically speaking, anyway.

“Your concerns?” The muscle fibers in his legs twitch, firing erratically as though he’s just finished running a marathon. Kepler itches to hoist himself to his feet, and yet, even with the restraints gone, he feels glued to the table. “I assure you – Mr. Cutter, Dr. Pryce – I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary, sirs.” 

Cutter’s grin widens. Pryce’s fingers on her arms drum in a smooth, dizzying wave.

“That’s just what I hoped you’d say, Warren!” Cutter turns towards Pryce, just over his shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you we could count on him, Miranda?”

“Oh, you certainly did,” she answers, sweet honey dribbled along the sharp edge of a blade. 

“Yes, I did,” Cutter agrees. He sets his hand down on the metal gurney. Tips of his fingers skating over the surface, Cutter saunters around the colonel’s side. “But, I’m afraid that just doesn’t change the facts.”

Cutter sounds positively distressed. His brows are drawn together in regret, mouth pouted like a spoilt child. Pryce lies unreadable behind one shoulder. The smear of Jacobi’s unnatural assurance over the other.

“And what are the facts, sir?”

“Oh, how should I put this? You might have noticed, Warren, that there’s been a little bit of _tweaking_ to employee management lately.” Kepler frowns. Cutter has paused, standing parallel to the colonel. “What am I saying? Astute man such as yourself – of _course_ you noticed!”

Cutter’s fingers land on his back, settled on his spine between the pointed tips of his shoulder blades. Kepler swallows. He follows the direction of Cutter’s gaze. To Jacobi. 

“Yes, I have noticed,” Kepler says. Cutter’s fingers slide up, palm flattening against him. His skin skitters beneath that touch, insects with sharp, pointed legs scrambling along the underside of his flesh. “Sir.”

“Of course you did,” Cutter repeats himself. “And some of us have had some, well – how should I put this – _concerns_ about how you’re going to work in this new structure.”

“I assure you-”

“Ah ah ah!” Cutter waggles a finger at him. “Don’t interrupt.” 

Kepler swallows hard, with a taste like acidic bile on his tongue – the taste of words unspoken, he imagines, and he unclenches his jaw, the muscles below his ears sore and sizzling.

“Yes, sir.”

“As I was saying, there are those of us here who _worry_ for you, Warren. You have your own, let’s call it, _leadership style_ , which is great!” Every conversation with Cutter is like listening to a sales pitch. “When it works.” A sales pitch clipped to the sight of a rifle. “And when it doesn’t, well, it _really_ doesn’t!” Cutter laughs and lifts his hand to clap him on the back.

Daniel is still smiling. Not even the forced, rictus grin of a soldier scared to witlessness in enemy territory. Just a relaxed, laisse-faire kind of expression, that Kepler’s only seen one or twice before. 

 

[A suffocating room in a shitty motel in a god-forsaken backwater corner of the earth, lit by an age- and smoke-yellowed light so Jacobi’s lines are softened and blurred.]

 

[His own quarters, sharp and white, Jacobi a dark outline before a dark universe, pouring them both a scotch.]

 

What must he be thinking, now, with Dr. Maxwell’s life the punchline to a joke. 

“Now, I hate to think of myself as some sort of _micromanager_ \- I like to give my employees a little, ah-” -Cutter drags in a satisfied, exemplary breath “-breathing room. Don’t you think so?”

A tiny muscle in Kepler’s cheek twitches, and he almost has a chance to think _he_ is supposed to answer here. Dr. Pryce pushes herself up straight, hands falling to her sides, fingers slender and pale and pretty, where they should be stained with the blood of her creations. 

“ _Just_ so, Marcus,” she parrots. “Of course, I’ve never known you to be shy when you spot opportunity for improvement.” 

Pryce doesn’t move towards him. She takes calm, measured steps to Jacobi’s chair, and there perches her hand lightly on his shoulder. Jacobi turns his head to smile up at her, and when she returns the expression, slow and benevolent, her eyes snap to Kepler’s face. From this distance, they’re a near perfect imitation. Kepler meets her gaze. 

“Improvement?” he drawls, and then looks to Cutter. “Sir?”

“Now, Warren, we aren’t here to drum an old beat, are we? I think everyone here can agree that your leadership results have been, less than stellar. Volatile, even.” Cutter finally pulls his hand away, the heat of him slow to fade. “Well? Can we all agree with that? Miranda?” 

“Why, Marcus, I believe we can.” Her fingers have crept up the parabolic arch of Jacobi’s neck. They twitch and twitter at the nape of his neck, in the short strands of his hair. Kepler can’t spy it now, but there’s a little silver knob just a few centimeters away from the tips of her fingers. 

“Good! Mr. Jacobi?” 

“I agree, sir!” 

“Fan _tas_ tic.” Cutter returns his attention fully to Kepler. “Warren, that just leaves you.” 

The fingernails of one hand are digging blunt trenches into the skin of his palm. The other grips the edge of the steel table until it groans. Kepler forcibly relaxes both. 

“I agree, sir.” 

“Excellent!” Cutter bares his teeth in a grin again, one that would look at home stretched around his teeth sunk into red, raw meat. “There was an _issue_ , Miranda and I _generously_ stepped in to help you solve, and now!” 

Dr. Pryce leans down close to Jacobi. Kepler watches her lips move around silent words. Her breath must tickle the fine hairs near Jacobi’s ear and roll over his skin like a thin, clinging fog. 

“Now, we just need to make sure that everyone can do their part,” Cutter says.

Pryce straightens. As if a string has tied them together, Jacobi follows, standing at ease. There’s no stiffness in his stance, no evidence of hot, tight tremors in the span of his shoulders. His fingers lie still and lax, curling towards his body. Jacobi meets his gaze but doesn’t seek it. A smile on his lips like he’s daydreaming. 

Jacobi’s never been able to shut his mouth, even when it’s closed– never fit for the subtler arts of SI-5. The man of a million and one tells; maybe not to others, but always to him. Like Kepler’s had a nail snagged in the crack of Jacobi’s shell since day one. Always able to pry him open and read him like a book.

Kepler can’t read a damn thing, now. 

Or, maybe, there’s nothing left to read. 

“We need to know that you’re still capable of commanding your subordinates, Warren,” Cutter says.

“Mr. Jacobi,” Kepler snaps and stands. “Attention.”

Jacobi straightens himself, fixes his god-awful posture without even a murmur of a complaint.

“Right face,” he orders, and Jacobi turns. 

“About face,” he orders, and Jacobi does a 180. 

“That’s all well and good,” Cutter says, and Kepler feels something hot and bubbling rile up beneath his flesh, feels viscous fluid pounding against the slim tent of his skin. “But we’re looking for something a little more _substantial_ here.”

He breathes deeply through his nose and swallows. There’s a sweet taste in the thin saliva that floods his mouth when he clenches his teeth. 

“Jacobi, hop up and down on one leg and recite the alphabet backwards.”

“Z, Y, X, W,” Jacobi delivers between breaths, right legging crooked as he hops. Cutter bursts into laughter like a ripe grapefruit seed crushed to buckling splinters beneath the snap of Kepler’s jaw.

For a moment, Kepler imagines it as the crisp, tight crack of fragile bones; the kind of sharp and thin bones one could swallow and choke on.

“Not quite what we’re asking for,” Cutter amends. 

“At ease, Jacobi,” Kepler says. “Mr. Cutter, if you aren’t getting the _results_ you’re-”

“-Just something more _interesting_ , Warren!” Cutter’s eyes are wet with mirth, a slimy sheen. “Come on, I know you aren’t boring – even have the personnel files to prove it.” 

“Now _there’s_ an idea,” Pryce says. Kepler had stopped paying her any mind, and now she insinuates herself next to Cutter, a manila folder splayed open in her hands. “I’d say there’s a decent chance we can find something interesting in here.” 

“Ohhh, _very_ good; at least someone here is thinking outside the box!” The ground is heaving again. Metaphorically, again. This game they play – it isn’t even subtle. Pryce doesn’t flick through pages. Cutter only glances down once before he’s beaming a perfect, friendly smile back to Kepler’s face. “And, would you look at that! What would you call _that_ , Miranda?”

…What the hell is in that file.

“Oh, I believe I’d call that,” Pryce looks up to Kepler like he’s a limping prey creature, “interesting.”

“ _Interesting_ ,” Cutter repeats. He takes the folder from her hands, closes it and holds it in the air. Chuckles a little. “Pretty old fashioned, isn’t it? But _effective_.” Cutter pinches the fingers of his free hand along the folder’s spine and drags upwards. “Can’t argue with that! Warren, do you know what this is?”

“My personnel file, sir,” Kepler answers. 

“That’s right,” Cutter says. “Your personnel file. All the information we have – well, all the _relevant_ information we have – all in one, easy to read, easy to navigate, file.” He taps it. “This, right here? Is everything you’ve done for us.”

“Sir-”

“ _Ev_ erything,” Cutter interrupts him sharply, one piercing syllable like a spearhead thrust into his gut. Kepler’s fists are clenched again but he doesn’t bother to control them. “Now, I want you to really _consider_ that fact, before you answer the following question:

“What do you think is in this file?” 

There’s a silence stretching taut then, the buzzing of invisible tension wires quivering between them all. Pryce and Cutter the spiders sitting at the tangle’s center and he, of course, the twitching fly. 

God, but they will regret putting him in that role.

Kepler can’t think that now. 

“My status reports, previous accomplishments and-” he grimaces, only partially because they expect it- “failures.” There’s quiet, and Kepler thinks _relevant_. “History with Mr. Jacobi, my role in his retrieval and recruitment.”

“Dig deeper than that, Warren.” 

“Strengths and weaknesses, sir? Perhaps a list of my favorite foods?” 

It’s not always a good idea to goad Cutter, and Pryce narrows her eyes, her lips thinning and twisting like the aged old crone she is. Cutter laughs.

“That probably is in here somewhere. At the very least, it’s on a computer back on earth, right?” Cutter sets the file down next to the first one, near the imprint Kepler’s new fingers have left on the examination table. Saunters with a loose-limbed quality over to Jacobi’s side. It’s hard to say how much of this conversation Jacobi has taken in. “Do I need to give you a hint?”

“It might be faster - with all due respect, sir - to just tell me what you want me to do.” 

“Ha! Warren, that is what I _like_ about you! So direct!” Cutter tosses an arm around Jacobi’s shoulders, pats his sternum with an open hand. “And such a spoilsport! Don’t you think so, Daniel?”

“Yes, sir,” Jacobi agrees.

“He really does need to _relax_ sometimes, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, sir.” 

“Good man, Daniel.” Cutter has the look of a boy pulling legs off ants. “And do you ever, say, _help_ him relax?”

Kepler’s stomach turns into a cold, hard knot. Breathlessly painless like a growing tumor. Something must show on his face, because Cutter’s smirk gets that much sharper at its ends.

“Yes, sir.” 

“You see, Warren,” Cutter says. With one last clap to his shoulders, he leaves Jacobi’s side. “In _some_ organizations, things fall between the cracks. Things get overlooked.” He’s walking to stand before Kepler. “Oh, just little things, you know. Minor disputes, rectified mistakes, misplaced equipment.” A pause in which the world holds its itself. “Sleeping with a subordinate.”

“We don’t overlook things,” Pryce says. “If something falls between the cracks, here, we find it.”

“And do you know? Those _things_ , those tiny, little inconsequential things – why, they are _just_ the most-”

“Interesting,” Kepler spits out, and the word is bitter, like earwax, like the indigestible leaves of toxic plants.

“That’s right! See, I knew we could all get on the same page.” They’ve somehow come to be on either side of him, Cutter and Pryce flanking him. Jacobi smiling at him, or at his direction, at least. “Now, why don’t you have Mr. Jacobi do something _interesting_ for you.” 

Something hot and wet is burning in his throat, and Kepler swallows it down.

“Mr. Cutter, I don’t think-”

“No, you _don’t_ ,” Pryce snaps.

“Miranda,” Cutter, soft and quiet, sing-songs in warning. She falls silent. Contents herself and her risen hackles to glowering at the colonel. “Warren, that wasn’t a request.”

He knows that, damnit. 

“You don’t have to ask him anything new,” Cutter continues. Like he’s trying to be reassuring. “Something you’ve already done and that is _quite_ an extensive list, I have to say.” His hand is on Kepler’s shoulder and Kepler would lose his entire _arm_ if it meant that man never touched him again. “Something you already know he would agree to.”

Something Jacobi would agree to. 

 

[They spent the night watching fireworks spread their burning entrails across the sky and now Jacobi’s panting into his open mouth, breath sour with beer, and he’s saying-

“Just to blow off some steam,” Jacobi says. “Nothing, you know, serious.” Then he groans at himself. “Ugh, that’s so _lame_ , forget I said that-”

Warren cuts him off then and there, and commits to putting his mouth to better use.]

 

[Jacobi won’t speak to him. Bad enough, bad enough to have all this _shit_ blow up in his face, bad enough that those _morons_ managed to call his bluff, bad enough that Dr. Maxwell-

And Jacobi won’t fucking speak to him.]

 

Kepler laughs, a joyless sound, and can’t think of a single thing Jacobi would agree to at this point. Not that it’s even relevant. He likes to think it used to be relevant. He has plans, now, which include getting them both the fuck out of here in their respective, disparate pieces. Which, then, _don’t_ include getting his rank and access stripped because he balks at what he has to do. 

 

[“You’re doing that thing, aren’t you?” Jacobi asks, but it’s more like an accusation. 

“What thing?” Dr. Maxwell asks. She’s actually asking. And she’s scared, because they’re pinned in, and she’s never been in a situation she couldn’t mediate her way out of. 

“That thing where he rationalizes an objectively terrible decision.” He hates it when Jacobi gives him shit.

“I wouldn’t say _objectively_ ,” Kepler hedges. Dr. Maxwell pales, which is impressive, given the shakes and pallor she’s been sporting for the last few minutes. He wonders if she’s going to faint. Jacobi gives her a wink.

“Don’t worry,” Jacobi says, “they usually work out.” Maxwell breathes out a soft exhale. “But they’re always terrible.”]

 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought I was clear; that was your _cue_ , Warren.” Only long enough for his blood to surge, for his heart to pump a few spasming pounds. “Or did you need some ideas?”

“Jacobi,” Kepler barks. “Come here.” 

It’s like any other mission. They have their roles. Jacobi stands before him, close enough that he could reach out to bridge the gap between them. Not thinking about how that gap is going to be bridged. 

“On your knees.” 

Jacobi drops like a rock, like an emp detonated within the confines of his skull. The bones of his knees make a resounding crack when they smack into the floor. It’s not an unfamiliar sight, or an unfamiliar order. And this is the part where Jacobi-

 

[-Looks up, with a grin sometimes, with a snarl others, and both of them quicken Kepler’s pulse. Tonight Jacobi’s on a hair-trigger, quivering anticipation for the lightest touch to set him off. He’s keeping his thoughts to himself, his face angled towards the floor. Kepler cards his fingers through the overgrown fringe of Jacobi’s hair.

“Jacobi,” he says. “Look at me.”]

 

“Look at me,” Kepler says. It’s not eager. It’s not a fight, either. Jacobi just looks at him. 

“Yes, sir.” 

The world and its absurdities loom large. Dr. Pryce and Mr. Cutter watching them. Kepler can’t even pretend to marshal enthusiasm and he’s pretty sure Jacobi isn’t in a state to either. He’s acutely aware of his own lack of interest. Jacobi’s lips part and close.

“Closer, Mr. Jacobi,” Cutter says. “Can’t do anything from back there!” 

Jacobi shuffles forward until Kepler can feel the warm, laminar flow of his breath. Kepler cards his fingers through the overgrown strands of Jacobi’s hair. They’re just long enough to curl around the reflective metal of his new hand. Tempered chocolate brown, glossy and slick. He drags forward until he’s cupping the back of Jacobi’s head, tightening his grip. 

His left hand fumbles with the clasp of his belt.

“Jacobi, I think you should help your superior officer,” Pryce says. Jacobi’s hands are immediately tangling with his own, deft fingers so much faster, surer. More practiced. The leather of his belt whispers as it slides free. 

“Don’t stop now,” Cutter says when Jacobi’s hands fall back to his thighs. “Give him some direction, Warren.” 

Every possible order seems nothing but laughable. There’s still so many layers separating them, and even with this display of _obedient_ compliance, Kepler remains distinctly unmoved. His insides twist like a frozen hand has threaded fingers through his guts, void of any sparks or stutterings of heat. 

“This is hardly inspiring confidence, Colonel,” Cutter says; he breathes out a _tsk, tsk_ , and shakes his head. He bites his lip, straight even teeth and sharp canines digging into plump pink flesh. 

This is hardly the worst thing he’s ever done. There is no blood shed, no violence. At the end of their night, the fragile cup of Jacobi’s skull will remain intact, its insides squishy and wet and concealed, where they belong. 

 

[He never saw their faces. When he closed his eyes and dreamt, his nights were as black and void-like as ever. Eventually, he learned to stop sharing. The suspicion, the disapproval – life was easier without. 

Until, an afternoon, a café; with the white heat steam of their drinks drifting serpentine in the air between them, ribbons of hazy, scentless smoke curling in on themselves in consumptive loops. Curling like the ends of Cutter’s sharp, jagged smile when he breathes in streamers of smog and asks-

“How do you sleep at night, Warren?”]

 

If the dead refused to haunt him, what could the living do? _Any damage you can survive._ Jacobi has been broken before. This is hardly the worst thing he’s ever done.

Kepler’s lips are moving. So are his tongue and teeth and throat, his gullet quivering and jerking. He’s speaking but there’s nothing in his head but a low, buzzing grate, as if his nerves are being sheared. His mouth feels numb, filled with stiff frozen cotton.

Jacobi’s hands are slipping into his pants, tugging them down his thighs.

He’s tethered to his body by a thin, taut cord. It’s almost, _almost_ as if he is standing on the sidelines.

Jacobi pulls him free. His fingers are curled and cupped around soft, limpid flesh. 

Low buzzing, a colony of stirred bees, or wasps, or hornets, angry and loud from the scissor of their stained-glass wings cutting the air, the clitter-clatter of their bristling, pointed legs against carapace, climbing and scuttering over one other.

Jacobi leans in, open mouthed, wet, pink. Fleshy, spongy tongue licking broad stripes along Kepler’s dick. Eyes focused on his task, unashamed of the time it takes his- partner to respond. 

He does respond. 

It stirs in the bottom of his stomach, the puffs of Jacobi’s breath like air blown over faded embers. Drips down his insides, tightens like the clenched fist that’s wrapped around his guts still, cinching his intestines into knots. 

Cutter barks something in amusement, something witty and cutting, Kepler’s sure. He barks it, he _yelps_ it, like a bitch in heat, high pitched and whining. Dr. Pryce laughs. The world quivers at its edges. 

He’s hard and hot, heavy in Jacobi’s grip. The familiar electric that tries to spark from Jacobi’s touch has to jolt along the tether to reach him, but it reaches his body all the same. His hips begin to twitch, quiver. His hand – _the_ hand, silver and unfamiliar – is digging into Jacobi’s scalp, mindlessly shoving and dragging to the pace of Jacobi’s bobbing mouth. 

Jacobi is nothing more than a bobbing mouth and wet suction, and swirling, lapping tongue. Kepler tells himself this.

 

[Jacobi is nothing more than a subordinate; a competent, thinking weapon. A body of knowledge, a culmination of acquired skills, a tool that shifts to meet his needs. 

They’re in a bedroom. Any bedroom. It hardly matters. What matters are the puddles of darkness in the room, the clinking of a ceiling fan holding itself together with rust. The long lines of Jacobi’s back as it tapers in to his waist, the highlights that moonlight or candle light or shitty, halogen street light lend to his form. Sheets swallowing him like the embrace of a lake, or another deep, still body of water.

Solitary night, as void-like as ever, disturbed by the heat of another body. The stretching expansion and release of his ribs as he breathes. It reminds Kepler of the billowing explosions he crafts with his hands, contained in pressure of his lungs and collapsing, over and over, the birth and death and rebirth of a universe in his chest.

Damn, but Kepler’s thoughts do wander at night.

Jacobi is nothing more than a man. A subordinate. Kepler tells himself this.]

 

His entire cock slips between Jacobi’s lips. He feels himself pop into the tight constraint of Jacobi’s throat, and it’s like a bubble around his head has popped. A low groan escapes his throat. All of his nerve endings are stinging, alive, thrumming with pleasure. His right arm is burning, dull in the base of his spine, urging Jacobi’s motions. 

The coil in his pelvis, between his hips is wound tight, and tighter, and tighter. He breathes out heavily, mesmerized by the red stretch of Jacobi’s lips around his dick. How wet and glistening his own skin is when he pulls Jacobi off, leaving only the tip of him warm and sheathed in the velvet stroke of Jacobi’s mouth. The satisfying of burying his entire length inside him, deeper and deeper until Jacobi is pressed tight to his stomach.

Warmth pulses in time to the rapid slam of his heart, and his mouths opens and he hears himself, this time, hears himself say:

“Jacobi, swallow.”

And feels himself grind his molars to powder against one another as Jacobi’s tongue shoves against the underside of his dick. As the muscles of Jacobi’s throat tug and quiver and clench around him, trying to drag him down into the dark, slimy depths of his esophagus. The pressure eases, saliva spills down in strings over Jacobi’s bottom lip like an overfilled basin. 

And then increases again, Jacobi swallows again, and again. It’s a blow to his solar plexus each time, sparks and stars streaking behind his eyes, the coil wound tighter – squelching, gagging, soggy coughing sounds – and tighter, and finally, finally, it snaps. Kepler’s hips snap forward, driving himself in deep, biting holes in his cheeks to keep from speaking. His mind goes blissful, blank, floating in a flood of hormones.

 

[Orgasm used to be perfunctory. The mechanics of being a living, breathing _person_. Kepler’s never felt the need to draw it out, to luxuriate in the sensations. It kicks like a mule into his chest, leaves him momentarily breathless, and then it’s gone. 

It changed, sometime, somewhere. He feels wrung out, worn out, and worse of all, he _doesn’t_ feel the immediate need to recover. They’re both sweaty and panting. An open window blows in a breeze that stinks of rotting fish. Pleasure clouds his mind, relaxes his limbs, wraps his reflexes and defenses in wool. There’s a nagging thought at the back of his brain, telling him to recover. 

Kepler sighs and leans into the sheets. His mind clamors and he lets it, and the thoughts wash onwards, lapping against him like waves on the shore, rising and receding.]

 

Kepler has to drag Jacobi off his cock. Jacobi actually _fights_ him for it, which sends a hot, painful bolt down his spine, until Kepler remembers to tell him to stop.

“At ease, Jacobi,” he says.

Jacobi stands, and doesn’t wipe the spit or semen off his chin. “Yes, sir.”

The knots are back in the loops of his gut, sharp tugging sensations near his stomach. His dick is still out, soft and wet, and Kepler shoves himself back in his pants. He can feel Pryce and Cutter’s gazes boring holes into his skin, into his meat and bones. Burning him, branding him – his _new_ hand curls into a fist – marking him irreparably, and permanently. 

He closes his belt. He looks at Jacobi.

This is hardly the worst thing they’ve done.

Cutter claps, loud and staccato and slow.

“Warren, I am _impressed_!” Cutter gushes. “I think you’re _just_ the man for the job.”

Jacobi stares straight ahead, and won’t fucking speak to him.


End file.
